All the strands were converging: serial killers, true crime, splatterpunk, sympathy for the monster. The hangman’s noose was knotted in 1988 when Thomas Harris’s second novel, The Silence of the Lambs, debuted and won the genre’s two biggest honors: the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award. A few years later, in 1991, the movie adaptation won five Academy Awards. Suddenly, Hannibal Lecter was a household name. This was the moment horror editors and agents had been eagerly awaiting for more than twenty years. This was the next Exorcist. This was Rosemary’s second baby. And the first
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